Celebration is usually at the culmination of an achievement by an individual/team. Tougher the achievement, more joyous is your feeling and more the reason to celebrate. When there is no achievement, what are you celebrating? Festivals, Marriages, Birthdays, Milestones, etc. Multiple reasons to celebrate but unfortunately the mantra of louder the better is the generally accepted norm these days – a DJ with gigantic speakers(Noise pollution)or worse still there are Karaoke parties where everyone has to endure the torture, Alcohol flowing accompanied with rich oily food that only harms your health(Body pollution), fireworks (Air Pollution), dancing on the roads and blocking traffic(time pollution)etc. Why is creating pollution the way to celebrate? 

Could we redefine celebration to be acts of health, charity, sharing our blessings with the less fortunate ones, improving the quality of the overall environment by planting more trees, etc? Just imagine what a world it would be if we are able to make this small change in the way we celebrate. We would be gifting ourselves and the generations to come a healthier, kinder, unpolluted world and above all an Art of Celebrating.

History is full of who conquered whom and how. So wars have always been a part of Human History(Can’t say Civilization since we are yet to achieve that status). If Saints and God Himself wanted this different, then it would already have been a peaceful world but the fact remains it isn’t and it will never be. Why? They want each one of us transformed and that can happen only when each one goes through the trial of fire.

So the game is not external but internal – people like Viktor Frankl, Anne Frank have shown it’s possible to experience love in the midst of terrible tragedy. So you have to change the rules of the game for yourself and move against the current of the society which is so beautifully captured by this doha of Sant Kabir “Khada Kabir Bazar Mein, Mange Sabki Khair, Na Kahu se dosti, Na kahu se Bair”

Many people, goals, desires come into our lives and go away,

what was/is the purpose of life that binds you? 

It is possibly to know that you were/are always free…

But who knows?

Where do you go after you die? 

The same place before you were born? 

But who knows? 

You have to make peace with inevitability,

What has been born will surely die,

The elements will fold into their own and that which was born will return home…

But who knows? 

What will happen, no one can tell, 

But the body will die, that everyone knows and yet we live in the hope that today is not the last…

But who knows?

Will there be someone with me when I pass?

Holding my hand and saying it’s OK,

For those who love you are on both sides….

But who knows?